


the in-betweeners

by cakecakecake



Category: Hey Arnold!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Bisexuality, Dating, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Future Fic, Headcanon, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Past Relationship(s), helga being helga, it's always the quiet ones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26363113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakecakecake/pseuds/cakecakecake
Summary: arnold and helga talk about their dating history the night before they marry.
Relationships: Helga Pataki/Arnold Shortman
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	the in-betweeners

“Oh come on, Arnold, it’s not like I’m gonna get mad. I’m not _twelve_.” 

Her toes bump against his. Arnold wrinkles his nose at her, shifting beneath the sheets and sighing when she pulls her long legs away from his. His fiancee is grinning something wicked up at him, deep blue eyes glimmering in that same way they always had whenever she’d caught him in a trap. She’s setting less of them, these days. Being thirty and tired takes the fight out of you, it seems, even when you’re Helga G. Pataki. 

She hasn’t lost it completely, though. It’s only a small relief. 

“I know, I know,” he tells her, leaning his back against the headboard. She curls against him, chin on his shoulder as her hands float across his chest, rubbing at the small expanse of skin peeking out from his open shirt. “It’s just weird, y’know? It all feels so foreign to me, now. Different.”

“ _We_ were different, then,” she smiles, a genuine smile. She stretches her legs, seeming to be giving up easily as her eyes fall shut. She hums. “It’s okay. Look, you don’t have to tell me -- I’m just curious, is all.” 

“You sure it’s not awkward?” he asks tentatively. She smirks. 

“Of course it’s _awkward_ ,” she laughs. “That’s why it’s _fun_. Hpmh. How about if I guess?” 

“Really?” he laughs. “You wanna guess?”

“Why not?” she sits upright and cracks her knuckles. “Since we’re being juvenile already. Talking about our past sex-capades like we’re at a college sleepover.” 

“Okay -- but what if you don’t know who it was?”

Helga’s brows fly up. “You? Fucking someone I never knew?” 

“Hey, you asked,” Arnold says defensively, and she wriggles around, pinching his arm.

“I know, I know! Criminey! When was it, then?” 

“Mmm, about seven years ago,” he starts to explain, feeling the color rising in his cheeks. “I spent a week researching in the Peruvian on my own, and I met this woman.”

“What was her name?”

He shrugs, sheepish. “I don’t remember.”

Helga claps a hand over her mouth. “Arnold!”

“I really don’t!” he croaks, but she starts waving her arms, shaking her head and laughing.

“No, I believe you! I just -- wow, I didn’t know you had it in you, Football Head!”

“I didn’t either!” he tries to laugh, feeling his ears burning. “It’s -- really embarrassing, we were a little drunk. One minute she’s talking to me about giant river otters and the next -- ”

“Uh-huh, yeah, okay,” Helga nods, waving a dismissive hand. She makes that crooked face she always does when she gets jealous, but then she starts laughing again, softly, easy. It helps him relax. “Geez. And you insist you never had a bad-boy phase.”

“Well, y’know,” he lowers his eyelids. That lazy-sexy stare that he knows always drives her crazy. “It’s always the quiet ones.”

Helga snickers, glancing aside. “Speaking of.” 

“What,” Arnold perks up, lifting himself up on his elbows. “Who.”

“Okay, you have to promise not to laugh,” she warns him, and he huffs. 

“Helga, I’m not gonna laugh. Not like you -- ”

“Oh, ha ha,” she ribs him, scrunching her nose. “Seriously, though, you have to promise not to be weird -- ”

“Come on, Helga, who?” he nudges her, and she chews her lip. 

She lets out a sharp breath through her nostrils, and then confesses in a quiet voice, “Lila.”

Arnold almost bolts from the bed. “LILA?”

“SHH -- SHUT UP!” she hisses at him, shoving a pillow in his face. “Jesus, you wanna let the whole hotel know? Christ!”

“Helga!” he whisper-yells, choking down laughter, “Lila?! Really?”

She blushes hotly, smacking him again, a different pillow this time. “Yes, _really_ , why would I make that up!”

“I don’t think you would,” he stumbles, hands up defensively. “It’s just a little strange. You hated her, so much -- ”

“Yeah, when we were _children_ ,” she snaps.

“When was it?” he asks, a little dubiously curious. She shrugs.

“Oh, I don’t know -- high school, the first time.”

“The first time?” he lifts a brow. “You hooked up more than once?”

“Why is this so interesting to you?!” she needles him, not so much angry as bemused. She crawls over him, settling in on his lap. “Do you want proof or something?”

“No, no! I just -- ” Arnold laughs, but then narrows his eyes, playing with her. “Wait, do you have any?”

She smacks his thigh. “Arnold!”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that, I swear! I mean -- well -- ”

“No I don’t have any _proof_ , Arnold, God,” she groans, but it’s a sarcastic groan -- a rumble beneath her incessant giggling. “Shit, if I knew you’d be into it, maybe I would’ve gotten some.”

“Helga!” he gurgles on another eruption of chortles, hiding his face with the crook of his elbow as he catches his breath. She sighs, and so does he. “Damn. Lila. How did that even come to be?”

The smile melts away from her face in an instant. She stretches forward, reaching to hold his hands as she balances over his hips, shifting a little. 

“Well...When you left, I. I had a really hard time coping, and...Lila was a really good distraction,” she explains. She sounds a little guilty, a little sad. Arnold frowns. “She was really supportive.” 

“Is that when you realized?”

“Yeah, yeah it was,” she nods. “I tried to meet other guys, after we. Y’know,” she offers, sheepish, and Arnold nods with a helpless, understanding smile. “But it just wasn’t the same. None of them were you.”

A tug pulls hard at his heart as Helga starts to smile again, still blushing just faintly. 

“Hell, there was a brief time I really thought I was actually…” 

She pauses, breathing out a shy laugh that Arnold can just barely hear. He clutches her hands, pulling her down closer to kiss him, and she does so. Gently, with a great warmth. Three times in a row, as she can never kiss him just once. He’s almost hurt when she pulls back to explain further.

“But, no, just -- just bi. I just happened to see girls almost exclusively, because, well -- there was no other boy with a heart like yours.”

“Helga,” he sighs, wistful and mushy, wriggling beneath her. She rolls her eyes. 

“Oh, don’t give me that puppy face, I’m just being sincere!”

“I know. I know you are,” he says fondly. “So Lila wasn’t the only one?”

“Nope. There was Squeaky -- ”

“Stinky’s cousin?”

“Yeah. Horrible kisser, ugh. _That_ was a one-and-done. And then there was Ruth -- ”

Arnold’s jaw drops. “What.” 

“What!” she barks.

“Ruth McDougal?”

“Yes, Arnold, Ruth Mc-fucking-Dougal,” she says bluntly. “I had a fucking complex, okay? She’s fucking awful in bed, by the way. Total pillow princess.”

“Thanks for confirming,” he laughs awkwardly, and she responds in kind.

“Sure, no problem. And then senior year me and Rhonda kinda had a thing. It went on for months, but then Rhonda was _Rhonda_ about it, so...” 

Arnold’s eyes go wide. “Whoa, you dated Rhonda?”

“Not technically, no,” she starts, sourly. “No, she didn’t want anyone to know. Nobody knew about her, not even Nadine -- and by then I was the infamous bisexual ringleader of Hillwood High and everyone hated me because I was obviously doing it all for attention. Hah! Stupid. Kids are so stupid.”

“I’m sorry, Helga.” 

“It’s fine,” she says, and then adds, “Well, it wasn’t, but, y’know. I got tired of sneaking around and lying to Curly, and Rhonda got tired of lying to herself. Ha, I’ll never forget prom…”

“You went together,” he remembers, thinking about the pictures Gerald sent him on MySpace back then.

“Yeah, we did. She watched Curly dance with someone else an hour in and had a breakdown,” Helga says with a hollow laugh. “I kinda knew the whole time she had feelings for him. I just felt awful for her -- she said she felt like a ‘bad bisexual’ because she wanted him and not me.”

“Oh, Rhonda,” he breathes, sympathetically, but Helga shakes her head. 

“She got over that, eventually, obviously,” she says. “I couldn’t convince her at the moment, but she came to accept herself, over time. Just takes some of us a little longer.” 

“Yeah, that it does.”

“When did _you_ figure it out, Arnold?” 

Arnold breathes in slowly, shoulders slugging as he lays back, eyes on the ceiling. His hands still clasped with Helga’s. “There was...a boy, back in San Lorenzo. Years ago. It might have been around the time we…”

He looks up to check for any change in her expression, but she’s still just smiling. “It’s okay. Go ahead.” 

“His name was Federico,” he starts, feeling nostalgic. “I was learning Spanish and his mom was tutoring me. We never did anything -- I don’t think he was...like me. I just remember watching him do really like...mundane sorts of things, and feeling this...fascination. Like the way he combed through his hair or reeled in his fishing rod.”

He can see Helga nodding just within his peripheral. Her thumb brushes over the soft bump of his palm.

“I felt really confused,” he goes on. “I remember crying to my dad and asking him if there was something wrong with me. It was then he told me about Eduardo.”

“Huh?”

“My dad’s bi, too,” he tells her. He can’t help grinning. “He and Eduardo and my mom -- they’ve been sleeping together since before I was born.” 

“Ha! Ya know, now that you say it, everything makes sense,” Helga says. “Wonder if it runs in your family.” 

Arnold snorts. “Grandma had a few wild years, but other than that, I don’t think so.” 

“She would,” she smirks. “So...Anybody else?” 

Arnold grunts, rubbing his temples. He does have just one other, but. 

“Okay, don’t laugh, but…” 

Helga’s eyes light up. “Who!”

“Please don’t laugh,” he begs her, knowing good-and-well she’s definitely going to.

“Come on!” she grabs at his waist, biting her lip. “Tell me.”

“Eugene,” he says, resigned, and as expected, Helga dissolves into laughter. 

“HA -- ”

“Helga!” he tries to scold her, but he just laughs, too.

“Sorry! Oh, my God, sorry Arnold but that’s just so funny -- ”

“Oh come on, he’s really nice!” he says in friend’s defense. 

“Did you guys fuck?” Helga pokes at him, and then, more quietly, she asks, “Did you top?”

“Helga!” Arnold catches himself between a groan and a chortle and it hurts his throat. 

“Hey, night before the wedding, dingus, you gotta tell me _all_ the dirty secrets,” she says impishly, squaring her hips right over his crotch and ugh, she’s so lucky she’s beautiful and witty and hilarious and about to be his wife. 

“Fine, then,” he sighs. “Yes, we did, and no, I didn’t.”

“Arnold!!” Helga almost screams, burying her face in his chest like it’s going to stifle the noise she’s just made. He fidgets beneath her, grabbing at her hair to pull her up to meet his face again. 

“Look, I never slept with another guy before,” he explains, trying not to laugh, “and he never tried... _giving_ , so…”

“Bottoming for Eugene Horowitz,” she teases him, “God, Arnold, you are too good for this world, truly -- ”

“You’re so embarrassing,” he groans. He grabs a pillow to shield his face, but he can’t hide from her. 

“How can I not be when you’re so cute?” she giggles, and he whines from under the cushion. “Oh, look at you, you’re like a teenager. Come here.” 

She grabs it and tosses it away, watching his face flush from crimson to pink before crushing her lips against his, the full weight of her body pressed so pleasantly into his. He wraps his arms around her, legs entwined with hers, close and then closer.

“Any other secrets, then?” he asks, barely a breadth between their lips. “Or can I finally go to sleep with my almost-wife?”

“Hmm,” she takes a pause, but then. “Ahaha, well, yeah, there is one more.”

“Spill.”

“Remember that uh, brief period of time Rhonda broke up with Curly to go gallivanting on the east coast with Harold for like a year before they finally made up and got engaged?”

Arnold arches a brow. “Yeah?”

Helga grits her teeth. “Well…”

He snorts, squeezing his eyes shut as he wheezes. “Helga...no…”

“Yeeeah…”

“Curly?!” he hoots, and she laughs, too. 

“Yeah, so! He was lonely, I was lonely,” she tries to defend herself, but she’s giggling too much. “What, he grew up well! He’s mostly normal, now. Mostly.”

He shakes his head helplessly, nudging her nose with his own before kissing her yet again. And again.

“Oh, Helga.”

And again. And again.

“Oh, Arnold.”

And once more.

“I’m so happy I’m marrying you.” 

And one-more one-more time before turning off the light.


End file.
